For the first time in Germany, the AfD has won a district election, as the administration announced on Sunday.
Voters in the central German town of Sonneberg have elected AfD candidate Robert Stuhlmann at the expense of incumbent District Administrator Jürgen Köpper of the CDU.
In the run-off election in the Thuringian district of Sonneberg, Stuhlmann received 52.8% of the votes, according to the electoral authority, thus securing the required absolute majority.
The area with around 57,000 inhabitants is one of the smallest districts in Germany. Still, the AfD’s victory is a major breakthrough for the far-right party, with which mainstream parties have refused to cooperate on coalition deals.
The AfD leader in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, welcomed the victory and said it showed the party’s recent momentum.
“And then we prepare for the state elections in the east, where we can really trigger a political earthquake,” he said, referring to the state elections in the eastern states of Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg.
The Thuringian party leader Björn Höcke (left) and the AfD federal chairman Tino Chrupalla (right) joined Robert Stuhlmann (middle). Image: Jacob Schröter/IMAGO
How did the AfD opponents react?
Thuringia’s social democratic interior minister Georg Maier described the result as “an alarm signal for all democratic forces”.
He called for partisan interests to be put aside and for democracy to be defended together.
President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, said that while not every AfD voter holds far-right views, the party itself does.
“This is a turning point that the democratic political forces of this country cannot simply accept,” he told RND media.
The International Auschwitz Committee also expressed its dismay.
“Today is a sad day for the district of Sonneberg, for Germany and for democracy,” said Senior Vice President Christoph Heubner.
“A majority of voters have obviously said goodbye to democracy and consciously opted for a right-wing extremist, Nazi-dominated extermination party.”
What was at stake?
Earlier this month, in the first round of voting in the runoff, Stuhlmann missed out on overall victory by just a few percentage points.
Such a strong performance by an AfD candidate sparked national alarms as all the other major political parties – the SPD, the Greens, the neoliberal FDP and the Socialist Left Party – backed the incumbent.
Although it is the highest political office in this small area, the position itself is of moderate importance and wields rather limited powers. Even after the AfD wins the elections, many of Stuhlmann’s tasks will simply consist of implementing laws of the state or federal parliament at the local level.
However, critics fear that the AfD could exercise political power at all and consider the party to be xenophobic and anti-democratic.
AfD rises sharply in polls
This browser does not support the video element.
The domestic secret service classifies the party in Thuringia and its controversial hardliner Björn Höcke as well-known right-wing extremists.
The Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB) had also asked voters to stand up for the conservative Köpper.
The CDU claimed that the election campaign was aggressive and evil, false claims circulated on social media.
AfD on the rise
The AfD’s victory on Sunday marks a milestone for the far-right party, which currently sits between 18 and 20 percent in polls nationwide.
She has garnered a wave of support as the nationwide governing coalition of the left-wing SPD, the Greens and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) shows signs of power struggles. Despite her rise, SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz faces a bigger challenge from the right-wing CDU. The conservative party of former Chancellor Angela Merkel is in polls at almost 30%.
The AfD entered the federal parliament for the first time in 2017 after having campaigned strongly against migration. More recently, the party has criticized German support for Ukraine while Kiev fends off Russia’s invasion.
zc, jsi, rc/kb (dpa, AFP, AP)